[ quoting rearranged for context - billn]

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Dr. Ghastly wrote:

> > 1. When advertising a domain name, why would I want to
> >    include the 'www' portion? I know the significance of 'www',
> >    but is it really necessary these days? I could see back in the days
> >    when the company had even traffic amongst it's ftp server, etc;
> >    but I fail to see why it is  needed. From a recognition standpoint,
> >    I think http://mydomain.com is nicer than www.mydomain.com.
> >    Just curious.
> 1. Some sites work with the www but not without, and vice versa. Depends on
> the server and how it was registered.

Registration has nothing to do with this. It's a simply a matter of
creating an A record or CNAME within DNS for domainname.tld that points at
your web server. This is purely a function of DNS, and is wholly
independant of NIC registration and *should* be independant of web server
platform.

> > 2. Web develpment. I have yet to see a popular, and what most
> >    folks would consider "nice" site that meets w3c standards.
> >    Plug any of them into http://validator.w3.org/ and watch
> >    it throw up all over your screen. Is it possible to meet
> >    and pass the validator, yet keep the marketing dept. happy?
> 2. Absolutely not.
>

Absolutely, unless Doc G was being facetious here. W3C compliance should
be the holy grail of achievements for any site, because those are the
standards browsers are *supposed* to be developed against.

Yes, I know different browsers do things differently. Is it possible? Yes.
Is it *feasible*? Not always. Marketing people may not lean as far toward
the technical side as some of us, and may not simply understand that even
though there are things all browsers will do, some will do things
differently.

What sacrifices you have to make (Site Design vs Browser Compatibility vs
Cost to Deploy) depend on your product, your target market, and your
budget. Usually, standards compliance is the first factor to get tossed
out as sites target a specific browser and then pursue basic compatibility
across the board.

- billn